Yandina, Queensland

Indigenous heritage

Aboriginal people have lived in the Yandina district for over 40,000 years. They belonged to the Gubbi Gubbi language group, which consisted of a number of tribes occupying traditional resource areas. Around Yandina, the Undandi tribal area was east of the present day railway line while the Nalbo area was west of the line. Legends, bora rings, pathways, grinding grooves, scarred trees and middens provide evidence of occupancy.^[10]

Daniel and Zachariah Skyring

British colonisation began in the 1850s with the arrival of Daniel and Zachariah Skyring who took up the large Crown Land pastoral leases of Yandina, Canando, Whildka Whildka and Pooreema for around £14 per annum. Their land acquisition stretched from the upper sections of the Maroochy River, north along Yandina Creek to Cooroy.^[11]

The Skyring brothers employed sawyers to cut the significant stands of cedar and hardwood trees on their leasehold, with much of the timber products being sold through the merchant business of their father Daniel Skyring senior in Brisbane.^[12]

The Skyrings also established several cattle stations on their properties around Yandina and Ninderry. They had a total area of 92,000 acres, capable of grazing around 2,000 cattle.^[13]

The famous Queensland colonist, Thomas Petrie, recorded two significant events of frontier colonial violence occurring on the Skyring leaseholds in the early 1860s. One of Petrie's Aboriginal employees, Puram, was shot dead by a cattle station worker while collecting shellfish on the Maroochy River near Nindery. Another of his Indigenous employees, Karal, survived a mass poisoning near the same place. A white fellow at the cattle station gave out flour laced with arsenic which Karal ate, but he later drank saltwater to make him vomit up the poisoned food and avoid death.^[14]

Township of Yandina

In the late 1860s, Yandina became a stopping point for prospectors travelling from Brisbane to the gold rush at Gympie. The town of Yandina was surveyed in 1870.^[5] It was the first town in the Maroochy district. Many of the original buildings and the heritage streetscape of Stevens Street have been preserved. The Anglican church, built initially as a community church and opened in 1880, is the oldest on the Sunshine Coast. It is part of the Anglican Diocese of Brisbane. The Yandina hotel dates back to 1889 and was relocated using rollers and a bullock team in 1891 when the railway came through town. In the same year, the post office was moved to the new railway station. Privately owned Koongalba homestead is on the National Heritage List and is one of several historic homes in town. Yandina was originally planned to be the centre of the shire^[15]

Yandina Baptist Church opened in 1921.^[16][17] The Baptist congregation had previously been using the Anglican church for their services. In January 1921 the Baptists purchased the former union church in Pomona to relocate it to Railway Street in Yandina.^[18] The opening ceremony was held on Wednesday 16 March 1921.^[19]

Yandina Provisional School opened on 14 November 1889. On 4 February 1902, it became Yandina State School. A preschool was added in 1974.^[20][21]

The early timber getters logged beech, cedar, bunya pine and flooded gum. The timber industry remained important until the 1970s when a shortage of timber forced the closure on the Yandina mill. The fertile land around Yandina has been used for beef and dairy cattle, fruit growing, sugar cane and ginger.^[22]

Yandina Presbyterian Church was officially opened on Saturday 30 November 1940.^[23]

Nambour & District Reds (or Nambour Reds) soccer club was established in 1974. In 1997 Nambour Reds merged with Yandina Eagles to create Nambour Yandina United.^[24]

The Buderim Ginger Factory in Yandina was opened in April 1980 and also operates as a tourist attraction.^[25][26]

The town was bypassed by the Bruce Highway July 1997.^[27]

Yandina Baptist Church celebrated its centenary in 2021.^[28]

Today, Yandina officially endures as the oldest continuously inhabited town on the Sunshine Coast.^[29]